Last weekend I enjoyed my maiden Tassie fishing trip for the new season, finally managing to combine a book event (at Fullers in Hobart) and some media engagements with a cast or two. The first thing I must mention is the quantity of water. In nearly 3 decades of visits to Tasmania, I’ve never seen so much of the stuff running down the creeks and rivers, or simply lying in the fields. Normally dry gullies looked like spring creeks; depressions in paddocks reminded me of trout lakes. In the previously drought ravaged south-east, the Coal and Jordan rivers were breaking their banks. Further north, water was pouring into lakes Crescent and Sorell and they are almost full – something I doubted I’d ever see again. The Cowpaddock at Arthurs, which could have served as exactly that last season, is a major body of water once again, extending right back beyond Buchanan Creek.
The fishing was ultimately very good, although so much water posed its own challenges. Most rivers were simply too high to bother with. Even floodwater feeders were basically out, with sustained high levels mostly flushing all the terrestrial food (and thus the drawcard for edge-feeding trout) weeks ago. Many lakes posed a similar problem, having already filled and spilled.
In the end, two lakes stood out. At Penstock, we found galaxiid feeders on the western shore on a grey, gale-blown evening. If the trout saw a green Emu Woolly Bugger in the slightly murky water (Penstock is over-full and spilling powerfully), they grabbed it. After dropping two good fish (I blame frozen fingers!) I landed a well conditioned buck rainbow of 5 pounds.
The highlight though was a visit to Lake Echo – a favourite water of mine that was desperately low last season. While still not full, I can report Echo is now several vertical metres higher than when I last fished it. Another bit of good news is the recently opened Large Bay access road, which makes boat trailer and conventional car access possible most of the way to the northern end of the lake, opening up many hundreds of hectares of effectively ‘new’ water. With the water still rising over new ground, the trout were making the most of the flooded bounty, busily searching the classic grassy shores, as well as the steeper shores among the trees and rocks. While it was possible to pick up the odd fish blind searching, sunny skies made for very good polaroiding and any fish covered took a small inert Woolly Bugger confidently. Two of us ended up with about a dozen browns either side of the 1 kg mark between us, and I lost a much bigger rainbow in the sticks – a long story which I’ll expand on some time!
Overall, Tassie this season looks to me like turning on some of the best fishing – river and lake – for a very long time. Trout stocks have survived in almost all the drought-affected waters, not to mention those that have fared pretty well anyway over the last few years. Already the fish are slapping on condition and size, and once the weather begins to settle, the fishing in all the major waters (not to mention several we’d almost forgotten about) will be superb. If you haven’t planned a trip to Tassie for 09/10, you really should.
Lake Echo
Lake Echo
